From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2005-10-26T12:27:14+09:00
Subject: Re: overriding #inspect

Eric Mahurin wrote:
> Anybody know what the best way to override inspect where you
> may have a recursive data structure?  For now I'm just calling
> #to_s on the elements, but I would like to call #inspect
> instead putting in a "..." as soon as I find a recursive loop. 
> I'm guessing that I need to add an instance variable to say
> that I've been visited by #inspect.  Or maybe go check the call
> stack?

Array#inspect does it somehow:

irb(main):001:0> a = []
=> []
irb(main):002:0> a << a
=> [[...]]

See array.c. It looks like rb_ary_inspect() uses a table (a ruby array
actually) to keep track of visited IDs.

-- 
      vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407